Evolutionary Synthesis of Cellular Automata

Synthesis of cellular automata is an important area of modeling and describing complex systems. Large amounts of combinations and candidate solutions render the usage of deterministic approaches impractical and thus nondeterministic optimization methods have to be employed. Two of the typical evolutionary approaches to synthesizing cellular automata are the evolution of a single automaton and a genetic algorithm that evolves a population of automata. The first approach, with addition of some heuristics, is known as the cellular programming algorithm. In this paper we address the second approach and develop a genetic algorithm that evolves a population of cellular automata. We test both approaches on the density classification task, which is one of the most widely studied computational problems in the context of evolving cellular automata. Comparison of the synthesized cellular automata demonstrates unexpected similarity of the evolved rules and comparable classification accuracy performance of both approaches

Recent Advances in the Methods for Designing Superhydrophobic Surfaces

The investigations of superhydrophobicity and self-cleaning surfaces have been given a lot of attention in the last few decades. The surfaces having water contact angle larger than 90° are termed as hydrophobic surfaces and those which exhibit contact angle higher than 150° are said to be superhydrophobic. Such surfaces were first observed in nature in various plants and animals, for example, lotus leaf-like structures. Water repellence of various materials have shown great influences on various applications such as self-cleaning, anti-ageing, water-oil separation, water corrosion in electrical industry, water proof textiles, controlled transportation of fluids, etc. Generally, surface micro/nanostructuring combined with low surface energy of materials leads to extreme anti-wetting properties. The hundreds of research articles and more than 450 patents on the subject of nature mimicking self-cleaning surfaces prove the potential of this topic

Plasma oxidation of NiTi alloy for medical application

V diplomskem delu smo izvedli plazemsko oksidacijo Ni-Ti zlitine z namenom tvorbe zaščitne oksidne plasti TiO2 na Ni-Ti kovinski podlagi. S tem smo povečali korozijsko odpornost in biokompatibilnost zlitine, kar je zelo pomembno za uporabo žilnih opornic iz Ni-Ti zlitine v medicini. Plazemska obdelava vzorcev je potekala v vodikovi in kisikovi plazmi pri tlaku 30 Pa z različnimi časi obdelave od 5 do 20 s. Primerjalni vzorec je bila neobdelana Ni-Ti zlitina. Vzorce smo analizirali z metodami rentgenske fotoelektronske spektroskopije (XPS), masne spektrometrije sekundarnih ionov (ToF-SIMS) in vrstične elektronske mikroskopije (SEM), da bi ugotovili kemično sestavo površine in oksidnih plasti ter morfologijo in mikrostrukturo oksidnih plasti. Za določanje biološkega odziva smo opravili in vitro biološke teste s polno človeško krvjo, da bi ugotovili, ali se trombociti na površino vežejo in aktivirajo. Pokazali smo, da se s časom obdelave v plinski plazmi povečuje debelina oksidne plasti, ki je iz TiO2 in ne vsebuje niklja. Barva vzorcev po plazemski obdelavi je odvisna od debeline oksidne plasti. Dobljena zaščitna oksidna plast zmanjša adhezijo in aktivacijo trombocitov iz polne krvi na Ni-Ti zlitini.The main aim of the research off my thesis was to form a protective oxide layer TiO2 on the Ni-Ti metal surface by carrying out the plasma oxidation of the Ni-Ti alloy. With the plasma treatment the corrosion resistance and the biocompatibility of the Ni-Ti alloy were increased, which are very important properties for medical applications. The plasma treatment was performed at pressure of 30 Pa in hydrogen and oxygen plasma with a different treatment times ranging from 5 s to 20 s. The untreated sample of Ni-Ti alloy was taken for comparison. All samples were analyzed by the X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to determine the chemical composition of the surface and the oxide layers and the morphology and microstructure of the oxide layers. In order to asses biocompatibility of samples in vitro biological tests with a whole blood were performed. We have shown that TiO2 oxide rich layer is formed with plasma, which does not contain Ni. The thickness of the TiO2 oxide layer increases by plasma treatment time. Changes of the colour of samples reflect the change of the oxide layer thickness. It was shown that the protective oxide layer of TiO2 on Ni-Ti alloy reduces adhesion and activation of platlets from whole blood

Exploring the Performance of an Evolutionary Algorithm for Greenhouse Control

Evolutionary algorithms for optimization of dynamic problems have recently received increasing attention. Online control is a particularly interesting class of dynamic problems, because of the interactions between the controller and the controlled system. In this paper, we report experimental results on two aspects of the direct control strategy in relation to a crop-producing greenhouse. In the first set of experiments, we investigated how to balance the available computation time between population size and generations. The second experiments were on different control horizons, and showed the importance of this aspect for direct control. Finally, we discuss the results in the wider context of dynamic optimization

Aragonesisms in José Antonio Labordeta\u27s Short Stories

El presente trabajo consiste en el análisis de los aragonesismos, encontrados en los cuentos cortos de José Antonio Labordeta, que emplea en su narración palabras dialectales y coloquiales utilizadas en Aragón. Los aragonesismos son palabras de diferentes orígenes, pero propias del castellano hablado en Aragón. La dialectología y la sociolingüística son las principales disciplinas dentro de la lingüística que se dedican a estudiar las variaciones no normativas de la lengua oral. Aunque algunos autores consideran que el objeto de estudio de las dos solapa, en este trabajo se defiende que es la dialectología la que analiza la variación diatópica o dialectal, mientras que la sociolingüística en su estudio introduce el aspecto social de la lengua. En cuanto a la explicación de los aragonesismos, introducimos una definición modificada, basada en el análisis en este trabajo, en la que defendemos que los aragonesismos son los elementos lingüísticos que se utilizan en la variante regional del castellano propia de Aragón y que tienen uno de dos posibles orígenes: bien son préstamos de la lengua aragonesa, bien tienen origen propiamente regional aragonés. Al llevar a cabo el análisis se ha llegado a la conclusión que los aragonesismos son mayoritariamente léxicos y que además este léxico describe sobre todo la naturaleza del campo con prevalencia de los campos semánticos de flora, fauna y clima.This Master’s Thesis consists of the analysis of the Aragonesisms found in the short stories by José Antonio Labordeta, in whose narrative the readers can observe the dialectal and colloquial words used in Aragon. The Aragonesisms are words that have different origins, but characteristic of Spanish spoken in Aragon. Dialectology and sociolinguistics are two main disciplines within the area of linguistics that study non-normative variations of the oral language. Although some authors consider the of study objective of both disciplines to overlap, in this Master’s Thesis, it is argued that it is dialectology the one that studies diatopic or dialectal variation, whereas sociolinguistics is interested in the relation between the social elements and the language. As for the explanation of the aragonesisms, we propose a modified definition, based on the analysis of this paper, in which we sustain that the Aragonesisms are linguistic elements which are used in the regional variant of Spanish own to Aragon and that they have two possible origins, either they are loanwords from the Aragonese language or they have an origin which they own to the regional Aragonese Spanish. In conducting the analysis, it was concluded that the Aragonesisms are mostly lexical and that, in addition, the lexicon describes mostly the countryside nature with the predominance of the semantic fields of flora, fauna and climate